Banking on his immigrant experience - Profile: Basan N. Nembirkow

School Administrator, April, 2004 by Jay P. Goldman

He grew up as a pre-adolescent adoring the Brooklyn Dodgers, and his friends in central New Jersey applied the nickname of Buzz, to which he still answers. But in other respects, it would be hard to suggest Basan Nembirkow is simply a product of a middle-class American upbringing.

Nembirkow, who's about to finish his second year as superintendent in Chicopee, Mass., comes from another world. His parents and other ancestors lived in what is now Mongolia, where Genghis Khan once roamed. This makes him one of the nation's few Asian American superintendents and surely the only one ever to be hired as an education consultant to the Republic of Kazakstan.

Those experiences, in combination with nontraditional posts he filled before moving into the superintendency, mean Nembirkow applies a decidedly different worldview. Born in a small Bavarian town where his refugee parents had temporarily settled during the World War II, he brings dynamic and fresh thinking to his work. "Buzz is the type of person who rallies people around him with the teachers knowing he is their champion and leader," says Paul Andrews, director of professional development for the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents.

In Chicopee, the second largest city in western Massachusetts, Nembirkow is attempting to replace what he called "random acts of school improvement" with a centralized system of data-driven decision making and support that benefits students in every classroom. About 20 percent of the district's 7,700 students are Hispanic with a smaller mix of second- and third-generation Polish, French-Canadian and Portuguese immigrants whose parents and grandparents worked in the textile, armament and cutlery mills, just south of Springfield.

Following a comprehensive analysis in which he studied students' test performance classroom by classroom, the superintendent introduced systemwide math and language arts curricula that replaced building-specific approaches. He used Title I money to hire Kaplan, the test preparation agency, to provide intensive tutoring in math and literacy during the school day. These moves added efficiency to the instructional process given the high turnover of students, estimated at almost 30 percent a year.

Nembirkow also has begun to challenge what he sees as sacrosanct customs of schooling. "During all my running around, I've found out there are lots of ways to organize a school, a school day, a curriculum and ways to teach," he says.

Before accepting his first superintendent's appointment in Greenfield, Mass., in 1996, Nembirkow filled educational positions not found on most leaders' resumes. He spent 12 years at the United Nations International School, rising to the leadership of the middle school program. He also directed the National Padeia Center in Durham, N.C., and was principal of a K-12 school in Chattanooga, Tenn., built on the Padeia philosophy, which emphasizes democracy as its core value and applies the Socratic method to learning.

"My checkered background has served me well," he says. But it hasn't already protected him from bruising encounters with sacred New England traditions. After experimenting for a year with a week-long mid-March vacation rather than separate breaks in both February and April, Nembirkow bowed to intense pressure and a barrage of excuses in Greenfield (some parents swearing that a February vacation "breaks the sniffle cycle" and others claiming a ski vacation as a right) to resume the traditional schedule.

For the most part, his actions have engendered wide support among teachers and parents. Meanwhile, his views on holding every child to high expectations--even those who like himself started with little command of English--have won over state officials. All but one of Chicopee's seven schools on the state's underperforming list have come off just midway through his second year at the helm.

"I think he faced prejudice as a child so he knows how tough it is being poor as an immigrant and trying to advance," says Michael Pise, a member of Chicopee's school committee for the last 10 years.

Nembirkow's leadership in sparking rapid gains in an urban center has given him the chance to raise his voice on a bigger playing field. During the past year, he was the lone superintendent invited to address the Massachusetts Senate on educational priorities and he received an appointment to Gov. Mitt Romney's Task Force on Underperforming Schools.

His firm grounding in democratic values is contributing to esprit de corps in Chicopee. Nembirkow says he's simply applying a discovery he made years ago as a successful collegiate soccer coach in New Jersey: "The first thing you learn is you're only as good as how well your players do."

Jay Goldman is the editor of The School administrator. E-mail: jgoldman@aasa.org.

BIO STATS: Basan Nembirkow

Currently: superintendent, Chicopee, Mass.

Previously: superintendent, Greenfield, Mass.

Age: 59

Greatest Influence: Emigrating to the United States with my family from a refugee camp gave me an international perspective on education, its organization and its structure.